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Sarah of Yemen (Arabic: سارة, fl. 6th century CE) is noted as one of the small number of female composers of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry known from the sixth century CE. It is possible that she was Jewish, in which case she is one of only three attested female medieval Jewish poets (the others being the anonymous, tenth-century wife of Dunash ben Labrat and the probably twelfth-century Qasmuna).

The poem attributed to her survives in the tenth-century anthology named Kitab al-Aghani:

The eulogy implies that Sarah was a member of the Banu Qurayza, commenting on their defeat by Muslims around 627. Little more is known about Sarah, but she 'reputedly participated in a guerrilla action against Muhammad before a Muslim agent killed her.'

References

1. ^ Emily Taitz, Sondra Henry, and Cheryl Tallan, 'Sarah of Yemen', in The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E. to 1900 C.E. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2003), p. 58.
2. The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, ed. and trans. by Peter Cole (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 27, 364.
3. Ed. by Theodor Nöldeke, Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber (Hannover: Rümpler, 1864), pp. 53-54.
4. Quoted by Emily Taitz, Sondra Henry, and Cheryl Tallan, 'Sarah of Yemen', in The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E. to 1900 C.E. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2003), p. 59.

• Arabic-language women poets
• Arabic-language poets
• Medieval Jewish poets
• 6th-century women writers
• 6th-century Arabic-language poets
• Medieval women poets